TRINITY VICAR FOLLOWS MUSIC OF HIS HEART

By CHARLES W. BELL

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS|

Feb 07, 1998 | 12:00 AM

A DECADE AGO, THE General Theological Seminary, in Chelsea, started an annual series called Excellence in Preaching, which brings together some of the country's brightest Episcopalian seminarians. Representing the Virginia Theological Seminary, in Alexandria, Va., at that first seminar was Samuel Johnson Howard, a one-time lawyer with a lilting drawl and an itch to preach. Now the Rev. John it's what everyone calls him is back in New York, this time to stay. Howard, 46, is the new vicar of Trinity Church, the richest and most glamorous Episcopal church in the country. His job puts him in day-to-day charge of Trinity's staggeringly diverse activities and services and makes him chief lieutenant to the rector, the Rev. Dan Matthews. One waggish parishioner already has nicknamed Howard, who was born in Lumberton, N.

C., and Matthews, who was ordained in Monteagle, Tenn., "God's good ol' boys.

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" They're a bit more urbane than that, and Howard, for one, laughs off the tag "I'm more Thelonious Monk and P.

D. James," he says. In fact, although it was Matthews who hired him, the two men are not long-time colleagues. "We'd only met once before, briefly," says Howard. Rectors outrank vicars, but at Trinity, vicars historically have run the everyday show, and when Matthews arrived 11 years ago, he decided to leave it that way. He usually preaches one Sunday a month, but normally does not marry, bury, baptize or carry out other such pastoral chores. Howard is still very much the newcomer, though. The walls and bookshelves in his third-floor office, which looks across Trinity Place directly into the church's famous graveyard where Alexander Hamilton and Robert Fulton are buried are still mostly bare. And downstairs, the lobby personnel directory still does not list his name. In one important way, Howard won't really settle until this summer. His wife, who is Lebanese, and his two sons, 16 and 12, will stay in Charleston, S.

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C., until the end of the school year. That's where he worked for five years, as rector of St. James, before he was tapped for Trinity. His first sermon at Trinity was based on a piece of advice given him by Matthews while they were talking about the vicar's duties. "He said, 'John, you've got to listen to the music,' " says Howard, "and so I used that to introduce myself and explain myself.

" He sees a lot of the Wall Street crowd at the daily weekday services "They're not praying for a bull market, they're looking for the same things we're all looking for" and even conducts laying-on-hands healing services. "I just did one this week, at St. Margaret's House [a Trinity-sponsored facility for seniors and the disabled]," he said Thursday. "Laying on hands is a way of saying and showing that prayer really matters.

" Howard thought a lot about the ministry while attending Williams College in Maine, and changed his major from political science to religion. Then, he went with the law (his father was a former judge) and enrolled at Wake Forest. "Even then," he says, "there wasn't a day when I didn't feel a tug to the ministry. But the chaplain at Wake Forest urged me to try law first and I did.

" He started in 1976 at a real estate and business law firm in Raleigh, N.

S. attorney, then a federal public defender representing poor people in serious trouble and, finally, in 1988, a staff lawyer for the U.

S. Senate committee on commerce. By then, Howard also was enrolled at the Virginia Theological Seminary and the law was about to lose another lawyer. Within a year, he was ordained and assigned to the Church of the Holy Comforter, in Charlotte, N.